Golden in the Mercy of His Means
by nebroadwe
Summary: Mangaverse. How many memories to a feather? How many feathers to a soul? Sakura ponders time, friendship, and a gift of apples. Set the day before chapter 70. 3rd Place in the TRC category at the 2008 UFO Awards.


_This is for Katie -- you asked for it ..._

* * *

_Ping!_

At the sound of the chime, Sakura half-rose from her seat before the telecom screen, then fumbled with the controls in the armrest to interrupt the unfolding spectacle of last year's Dragonfly Race. She smiled as the screen reassured her that she had successfully "bookmarked" the event for later viewing. The record-keeping of Piffle World was almost as un-book-like as it was possible to imagine, yet they still spoke of "libraries," "pages" and even "scrolling." _That must mean they used to use real books, right?_ she'd asked Syaoran.

_It's more than likely,_ he'd replied.

She'd been as pleased by the insight as by his endorsement of it -- recalling both now, she skipped a step down the corridor toward the recurrent _ping!_ of the laundry machine. This world had a device to answer every need, from light in darkness to knowledge from ignorance, but they were as insistent as children that their help be rewarded with attention. Lamps shut themselves off in empty rooms and completed tasks were announced with a bewildering variety of peals and whistles. The clean-clothes chime, however, Sakura could greet as a familiar friend. Dragonfly maintenance was close work even in this world's pleasant climate, so she had quickly become adept at feeding her companions' sweat-stained garments into the appliance and adjusting its settings.

The machine quieted immediately upon being opened and Sakura drew out socks, shirts and trousers, shaking them straight and delighting once again in the smell and feel of strange fabrics: linens woven so tightly she could barely distinguish the crossing threads; delicate, elastic knits in bold colors; and stuff as warm and tough as felted wool yet as supple as silk. "Synthetics" they were named on the labels sewn to collars and waistbands -- the same labels which, mercifully, instructed the wearer in their care. Sakura giggled as she folded a pair of the coarse, many-pocketed breeches Kurogane favored, remembering Fai's face as he held up a vest accidentally shrunken before they discovered the helpful hints. _It's not quite the right size for Mokona_, he'd mused. _Perhaps if we sent it through again?_

Her laughter rippled out into unaccustomed stillness. Syaoran and Fai had departed at mid-morning to shop for food and other necessities, with Mokona tagging along for luck (and the possibility of a snack). Kurogane had remained behind to continue rebuilding the dragonflies. Thanks to the telecom, they had all the information they needed to customize a basic model into a high-performance flyer, but knowledge and know-how, as Syaoran remarked ruefully, were two different things. He pored over plans while Kurogane disassembled the engines and Fai matched parts to their schematic representations. After a few hours, however, the mercurial wizard was inclined to tire of the task and begin teasing his companions, juggling discarded screws and flanges one-handed. Sakura enjoyed watching him spin the bright objects through the air, but Kurogane found it distracting. _A trip to the market will cheer everyone up_, she thought. _I hope Syaoran-kun finds everything we need._

Mounting the stairs to the bedchambers with the laundry basket balanced on her hip, Sakura paused to release the catch on one of the round windows overlooking the paved courtyard. The casement swung open with a long sigh, as if regretting the exchange of cool, still air for a breeze that carried with it the distant mosquito-whine of traffic. Sakura leaned out to see Kurogane sitting cross-legged before the largest dragonfly. His posture teased a recollection from her sliver of memory: old Maki the weaver at her backstrap loom, plying shuttle and beater in a steady rhythm as she sang.

_Water from the earth wells up shining.  
Fair is the flower that floats thereon.  
Thorns hedge it round to thwart a thief,  
Yet the hawk stoops and steals my heart._

Sakura blinked, and Kurogane looked up from the open housing of the machine's ventral section to meet her gaze. She waved; he nodded and resumed his study of the engine. _Maki-san didn't mind me watching either_, Sakura thought as she pulled the window shut, _as long as I was quiet_. It had been difficult not to _ooh!_ and _ah!_ as the threads accumulated to form flying birds or dancing men, but she had known that if she did refrain, she might be permitted to fetch the next bobbin. She wondered whether she had ever learned to wield the shuttle herself. The slick handles of the laundry basket were too unlike wood to tell.

Sakura left Kurogane's clothes in a neat pile beside his door. Fai's she hung in his closet, ignoring the derangement of garments strewn over bed and chest. He never wore them. In Syaoran's room, she rolled pairs of socks into balls and tucked them away in their drawer, then straightened the covers on his bed and fluffed the pillows, brushing a few short, white hairs off the one which sported a Mokona-sized dent. She had performed such tasks many times, on many different worlds, since coming to herself in the company of these four strangers. It was surely the least she could do in return for all the effort they were expending to recover her lost memories. Her hands slipped easily into the rhythms of folding and sorting and carrying; cooking and cleaning, though alien, had soon become nearly as familiar. Bandaging and soothing felt most natural of all, but she could not take as much joy in a competence exercised only when one of her fellow-travelers was in pain.

Sakura lifted the empty basket and hugged it close. She still found it strange to know things without recalling them, despite Mokona's reassurance that the body kept its own store of memories. She had been more alert to such things of late, to habitual gestures and instinctive reactions, to the hand as well as the cut of the clothes she wore. It seemed that she was not simply an empty vessel to be filled with the past, but -- Sakura rubbed the end of her left sleeve between her right thumb and forefinger -- a web unraveled to its warp-strings on the loom, waiting for memory to throw the weft once more.

As she turned toward the door, her toe caught on something hidden beneath the bedskirt and dragged it out. _What's this?_ She dropped the laundry basket and bent down to retrieve a single sock, then peered underneath the bed for its mate. But nothing else lay there, not even dust. A small round machine like a clawless crab scuttled about at intervals to clean the floors, beeping officiously at anyone who interrupted it. Sakura had never seen it eat anything as large as a sock, however. _Maybe Mokona has it?_ The smallest member of the party had without doubt the largest appetite and had swallowed (and regurgitated) much bigger items without so much as a hiccup. _I'll ask when they get back._

She retreated down the corridor, tilting the laundry basket so that the sock slid from one side to the other. Her feathers were a little like unmatched pairs of hose, now she came to think of it, jumbled up as well as scattered in their loss and returning in no order. Some she could piece together, recognizing common characters (_father, brother, friend_) or places (_lofty castle and busy market, narrow street and spiraling stair_) or times (_spring showers and birthday feasts_). But others sat solitary, like Maki at her loom, telling their own tales and nothing else. Had the weaver been a servant at the palace or a shopkeeper in the town? Had Sakura visited her often? She could not say. She'd never even noticed the lack of that memory until she'd recovered it ... or at least not in the way that she'd notice if Syaoran came to breakfast wearing only one sock.

One of the framed whorls of color Fai insisted were art and Syaoran compared to disturbed sand-paintings caught her eye as Sakura neared the stairwell. She stopped to consider it, leaning against the opposite wall and shelving the basket on her knees. Perhaps her recollections were less like stockings or close-woven threads than a painter's brush-strokes, which could outline new figures on the canvas or add depth and hue to those already present. It was left to her to guess between times what the whole depicted, without knowing how close it was to completion. _I hope it's beautiful_, she thought, _something everyone will be glad to see, someday ..._

A faint _whoosh_ and _thump_ reached her ears, accompanied by indistinct, high-pitched chatter -- the shopping party had returned. "Princess?" she heard Syaoran call, immediately followed by Fay's cheerful halloo: "Sakura-chan! Kuro-rin! We're ho-ome!"

Uncharacteristically, she hesitated, words of welcome shaping themselves unvoiced in her mouth. In the brief time she and these new friends had journeyed together, Sakura had seen and felt and learned so much (_knee-high snowdrifts, chocolate and cream, kitten-folded napkins, singed leather and bruised skin_) -- she remembered so much now that it dizzied her to think of what she had still to regain. Even if each feather held in its barbs a myriad impressions, she could not guess how many it would take to fledge her soul, to record a life measured in years, not months. And her companions, the fellow-travelers who shared her present as they pursued her past ...

_("You're doing this for a total stranger?"_

_"I am.")_

But she could not put her concern into words, any more than she could properly tell her gratitude -- not while everyone was so patient and generous. Besides, she didn't want Syaoran to worry, though it might have been nice to hear Fai affably dismiss her cares or feel Mokona cuddle up beside her for comfort. So she called, "Coming!" and pattered down the stairs, through the common room (where the unattended screen was beguiling the time by displaying row upon row of dancing Mokonas) and into the kitchen.

The table was half-covered with grocery sacks that Syaoran was unpacking into the cupboards, while Mokona perched on top of a waist-high stack of parcels next to Fai's chair. Propping his crossed ankles on the table's edge, the wizard leaned back to stretch as Kurogane, entering through the courtyard door, passed behind him. The ninja sidestepped this careless obstruction without audible comment and ran water into the basin to wash his hands. Sakura smiled at them all. "Welcome back!" she said. "Did you find everything on the shopping list?"

"Just about," said Fai. "Syaoran-kun always knows what to ask for."

"Even when the list is in Kurogane's handwriting!" added Mokona, bounding onto Fai's knees.

Kurogane's shoulders twitched. "What's wrong with my handwriting?" he growled, without turning from the sink.

"You must admit," Fai said, reaching up to scratch Mokona behind the ears, "that your calligraphy lacks a certain ... elegance."

"It's all squiggly!" translated Mokona, forepaws waggling in illustration. Sakura giggled.

Droplets rattled into the steel basin as Kurogane snapped his wrists to shake his fingers dry. "I'll show you squiggly -- " he began, and Mokona prudently leaped across the board into the laundry basket. Kurogane yanked the hand-towel from its bar like a drover readying his whip and glared at Fai, who grinned back with impenetrable amiability.

"We still need a BNQ3 and a TR45-12 and some other parts," Syaoran put in, gathering two loaves of bread in clear wrappings into the crook of his left arm. "But they're only sold in specialty shops downtown, and it was too far to go today."

"Maybe I can go tomorrow," Sakura offered, while Kurogane reluctantly wiped his hands. "That way you can get back to work on the dragonflies."

"An excellent suggestion!" agreed Fai. "You should take the opportunity to do some sight-seeing while you're at it -- it's not every day we find ourselves in a world as lively and safe as this one." He pulled his feet from the table and sat up straight. "Why, you can't even get lost. The street signs themselves give directions if you ask them."

That almost sounded like one of Fai's jokes, but as Sakura looked to Syaoran for confirmation, Mokona's face popped over the rim of the laundry basket. "That's how we found the market! We bought bread and eggs and tea and noodles -- _and_ a surprise for Sakura!"

"A surprise?" Sakura asked, pleased and curious. She peeked sidelong at the table, wondering which sack held the unanticipated treat.

"Mm-hmm!" Mokona's long white feet drummed a spirited roll against the basket's sloping side. "Something Sakura will like! Something good for -- "

Fai thrust out a long arm to pluck Mokona onto his lap, playfully muffling the creature's mouth with his other hand. "Don't give it away," he admonished. "Better hurry, Syaoran-kun, or the cat will be out of the bag before you know it."

_A cat?_ No, Fai enjoyed surprises too much to spoil them. "What is it?" Sakura asked, setting her burden down.

Syaoran shut the drawer where the bread was kept. "Just this," he said, and pushed one of the smaller sacks across the table toward her. Its contents wobbled, exhaling a faint, familiar aroma as Sakura grasped the bag in both hands to steady it. Her nose solved the riddle even as her eyes took in the surprise's shape and color.

"Apples!" she cried.

She remembered apples -- and how could she not, when they ran like a fallow thread all through the patchwork of her past, in silver bowls on the dinner table or wooden crates in the marketplace or lifted in round baskets and passed from hand to hand? (_"Your highness, would you like an apple?"_). She took one from the sack. It was larger than she expected, its skin waxy-smooth, without bruise or blemish. Pressing it to her cheek, she closed her eyes, inhaling its mellow, sweet scent, the tip of one finger resting on the prickly calyx. _They must be carefully tended here, to grow so big_, she thought, bemused that she could not sense an echo of that loving regard in the fruit's flesh.

"We saw red ones and green ones and pink ones," announced Mokona, having slipped free of Fai's slackened grip, "but Syaoran said that the yellow ones were _real_ apples."

"Yes," murmured Sakura, reopening her eyes to meet Syaoran's. "Thank you."

His face colored, though his glance did not waver. "You're welcome, Princess."

"I -- I want to share them with everyone," Sakura went on, pulling the apple away from her own warming cheek and passing it to Mokona, who promptly swallowed it whole. "Fai-san, do you know a good way to cook apples?"

"Hmm." Fai extracted several from the bag and lined them up on the table, turning them this way and that as if to check for flaws. Each one seemed perfect to Sakura, its skin almost glowing with ripeness in the light of the ceiling lamp. They were all so closely matched in hue and size that she suddenly wondered if apples in this world were grown not on trees, but in some sort of fruit-making machine. Her brows quirked down at the thought, then rose again as Fai pitched three apples into the air and began juggling them in a twisting cascade. "There's always apple pie, of course," he said, "but I think fritters would be more appropriate."

"Oh!" Sakura exclaimed, charmed as ever by the wizard's dexterity. After a moment's proper admiration of the spectacle, she asked, "What are fritters?"

Fai deftly transformed the cascade into three columns, the outer two apples rising and falling together. "Sliced fruit," he explained as he tossed and caught them, "dipped in batter and fried."

"Like beignets," Mokona piped up, bouncing on the pile of packages in time with the center apple like a fourth column to the trick. "Yûko loves beignets! She says you gotta drink Chimay with them --"

"Tempura," grunted Kurogane unexpectedly.

"I suppose every world has a variation on the theme," said Fai. He flipped the apple in his left hand across to his right and began juggling the fruit in a great circle. "Perhaps we should do some research and discover the local version. This one's a little overripe," he added, depositing an apple onto the table and snatching two more in its place. "And this one needs to sit for another day or so -- " somehow he managed to land it in the bag -- "but this one should be eaten this very afternoon. Whoops!"

The descending fruit, carrying a little too much momentum as he released it, rolled toward the edge of the table. Syaoran caught it before it could fall and Mokona cheered. Teeth bared in a comical grimace, Fai kept his two remaining apples in the air one-handed while he rummaged in the bag for another. "Gotcha!" he exclaimed as the new prop joined its fellows, and slumped back in his chair with an exaggerated exhalation of relief.

Kurogane snorted, every line of his dour countenance betraying his irritation with the other man's performance. "Do you have to play with your food?" he asked.

Fai gasped in mock horror. The apples soared aloft, almost grazing the ceiling, and dropped one after another down the wide sleeve of the wizard's jacket. "Don't glare at the apples, Kuro-pon!" he scolded, cradling the bulge protectively against his chest. "They'll _wrinkle_!"

The subsequent explosion cleared the kitchen of everyone but Sakura and Syaoran. For some little while afterward the sound of Kurogane (_"It's Kurogane -- _Kurogane_, do you hear me?!"_) pursuing Fai (_"Don't worry, apples! I'll save you from the scary man!"_), egged on by Mokona's sing-song commentary (_"Scary glarey! Scary glarey! Scary glarey!"_) was audible even through the closed windows. Syaoran sighed, rubbing a hand through his hair, and Sakura regarded him solicitously. He always seemed disquieted by these outbursts, though they thundered through with a summer tempest's transience as well as its fury, and left no lasting grudges. Sakura wished she could reassure him -- _my older brother teased me just like Fai-san does Kurogane-san, and I would get so mad at him, but it was all right, because he was my brother, and when I needed him, he always took care of me_ -- but as she drew breath to speak Syaoran began straightening the leaning tower of parcels beside Fai's overturned chair. "These are for the dragonflies," he said. "We'll have to work hard if we want to be ready for the race."

"I can put the rest of the groceries away, if you want to take them out now," Sakura replied, setting her concern aside.

He nodded and hefted three-quarters of the pile into his arms, while Sakura collected the loose apples and replaced them in their sack. Such a nice surprise they were, and the best sort of gift: something that everyone could enjoy. That thought worked like leaven in Sakura's heart, so that silence could not contain her happiness. "Syaoran-kun?"

He paused on the threshold. The courtyard door, which had slid open before him (allowing a theatrical _aiee!_ from outside to reverberate against the kitchen walls), closed again as he wheeled to rest the boxes in his arms against the countertop. "Yes, Princess?"

Sakura bowed to him. "Thank you again for the apples," she said. "It was sweet of you to think of them. As soon as Fai-san shows me how, I'll make lots of fritters for you and everyone."

"I'm sure they'll be delicious," he answered. The chin-high heap of packages prevented him from answering her courtesy, but his eyes were glad as he ducked his head and backed swiftly through the accomodating door.

Sakura ran to the window to watch him go. Behind her, the apple sack tipped sideways and sagged open, so that the topmost fruit peered out as if startled to be so precipitously abandoned. Sakura did not notice, her attention fixed on the straight, slight figure passing through the ongoing hue-and-cry as easily as a shuttle through the shed. _Syaoran-kun is so strong and kind_, she thought, folding her hands together on her breast. The tissue of her present was shot through with his kindness, along with Fai's good humor and Kurogane's courage and Mokona's mischief, bracing her awakening spirit and making her stronger, too. _I want to do whatever I can for them, even if it's only a little._ Perhaps it did not matter that their journey would be long, if it gave her more time to throw the weft of service back and forth across the warp of grace.

That thought reminded her of unfinished tasks, and she bent a stern eye on the scattered groceries, like a young lieutenant reviewing a batch of slovenly recruits. Swiftly she disposed them to their quarters: butter and eggs in the cold box, noodles and tea to cupboard and canister, onions and potatoes in their drawers. The apples in their bag she set aside on the countertop next to the stove to await Fai's return. The chase without had run its course and only the faint hum of the house itself murmured in her ears, like the singing of wind without its flight. _I must ask Mokona about Syaoran-kun's sock,_ Sakura thought, but made no move to fetch it from the laundry basket. Instead, she reached again into the sack and withdrew an apple.

_("One of the townspeople brought a bunch of apples to the castle ... He heard that I liked them ...")_

Cupping the fruit gently in her palms, she held it until its skin was as warm as her own, then lifted it to her lips.

* * *

**Author's Note:** _The title of this story comes from Dylan Thomas's poem "Fern Hill," which I highly recommend. A _backstrap loom_ anchors its warp threads on a belt around the weaver's waist; the other end of the loom is attached to a post or tree, and the weaver leans back to maintain the tension of the web. A _sliver_ (pronounced "sly-ver") is __a long, untwisted strand of carded wool or other textile material, ready to be spun or drawn__. _Chimay_ is the brand name of a family of beers produced by the Trappists of Scourmont Abbey in Belgium; Chimay exports to Japan, so no special pleading on my part is necessary to account for Yûko's familiarity with it. Maki's song is composed in a very simple alliterative meter -- the knowledge thereof I owe to the late Ted Irving, Anglo-Saxonist, but any errors of usage are, of course, my own. The quotations from manga chapters 1, 5 and 13 are somewhat freely adapted from the Del Rey translation, for memory is seldom word-perfect._


End file.
